Automobile assembly plants are generally located long distances from the markets where the cars will be sold. Although many cars are transported from the plant on highway car carriers to nearby dealers, say dealers up to about 250 miles from the plant, the majority of cars manufactured in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada are moved by bi-level or tri-level autorack rail cars from the plant to a central distribution point, where they are then driven off the rail cars, stored temporarily, and driven onto highway car carriers for transport to dealers. The term "cars" is used herein to refer not only to passenger automobiles but to station wagons, pick-up trucks, sport vehicles, and vans, and, more generally, to all motor vehicles generally comparable in size to passenger automobiles.
The traditional modes of transport for the car industry have a number of disadvantages. Moving cars from the assembly line to temporary storage lots, then to the rail and truck loading facilities, and subsequent movements at distribution centers is highly labor intensive - people have to drive the cars to a destination and return for more cars. Damage due to human contact is a major problem. Because the cars have to be driven onto and off of the rail cars and car carriers, driven in storage lots and parked in tight places, damage to doors and damage from occasional collisions with parked cars are common. The doors of cars in transit from assembly plants to dealers are ordinarily left unlocked and the keys are left in the cars for easy accessibility to the drivers who drive them when they are transferred to and from storage sites and transport vehicles. From time to time, persons enter the unlocked cars that are being transported and damage them. Also, the cars are exposed to the weather, hail being the most serious hazard, and to vandalism. There is, therefore, a need for a faster, safer and more economical means of transporting cars from assembly plants to dealers.
Another problem with the usual way in which cars are transported is that the autorack rail cars and highway car carriers are costly to manufacture and are unsuitable for transporting other cargo. The empty return trips from their destinations are wasteful of the equipment, the fuel consumed, the personnel, and the railways and roadways. There is, therefore, a need for providing for transport of cars by equipment that has cargo space suitable for transporting other cargo, not only when the rail cars and trailers are returned to their point of origin but for general use as well.
A number of attempts have been made to solve the problems discussed above. For example, Gearin et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,040,935 describes and shows a system for loading and transporting cars inside shipping containers. The cars are loaded onto carrier racks outside the shipping container and then placed into the container, where they are protected from external hazards. While the transporter system disclosed in the Gearin patent has attained some limited acceptance commercially, the system has a number of problems.
The Gearin system includes a highly complex, costly frame structure, which requires the use of equally complex loading and unloading facilities. The complex nature of the loading and unloading procedures also requires a significant amount of time. The system utilizes a large and bulky loading/unloading frame, which is difficult to work with. The large size of the Gearin loading frame does not lend itself to mass production.
Another Gearin patent, U.S. Pat. No. 4,768,916, discloses a collapsible frame system for loading cars into a shipping container. The Gearin frames are designed to collapse so that a number of the frames can be stored in the same shipping container on a return trip to the point of origin. A problem with this design, however, is that collapsing the frame involves a complex, multi-step procedure. Additionally, numerous components must be removed from the frame before it can be collapsed, and these components may be damaged or lost during a return trip to the point of origin.
Another system for transporting vehicles inside shipping containers has been proposed by J. B. Hunt. In the Hunt system, the frame which holds the cars is assembled inside the container, and the cars are then driven into the container and secured to the frame. The major disadvantage of this system is that after the cars are driven into the container, it is difficult for the drivers to exit the cars, and there is a danger that the car doors will be damaged from banging into the container walls.
Other systems for containerizing cars for shipment have been proposed. In general, such systems have been intended for overseas shipments on container ships. Containerization is not particularly useful in its previously known configurations for over-land transport of cars, inasmuch as it is usually not feasible to make up containers at an assembly plant having the mixes of cars that the dealers have ordered. Unloading and reloading containers at distribution centers to get the mixes of cars for the dealers using previously proposed systems is, as discussed above, labor-intensive, time-consuming, complicated and costly.